Current Address

Sister Jorden Elizabeth JacksonPhilippines Baguio Mission

PO Box 115

National Highway

Brgy. Lingsat

San Fernando, La Union

2500,PHILIPPINES

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Love, Laughter and Learning

This week has been amazing! For the last two weeks I think I
was drowning in a sea of Tagalog, but this week I started treading water! I can
feel the Lord’s help all the time. I am so grateful for the growth we have had
this week!

We are teaching new investigators. (By the way, these are
teachers pretending to be people they interacted with when they served their
missions in the Philippines. The life stories are true; our interactions with
them are not staged.) One is named Lester and the other is Kenneth. Lester is great;
he is just not interested in what we have to say AT ALL! His wife is working in
China and she met the missionaries and loved them. She is the one who gave us
the referral. But our other investigator, Kenneth, is amazing! We have had
great progress this week, even though we only taught two lessons.

When Kenneth was in college he was in a motorcycle accident
and is now paralyzed. Shortly after (or right before...language barrier) his
dad passed away. He just found out that surgery will never make him walk again.
He told us that he doesn't believe that God loves him, because of all the
terrible things that have happened to him. And the one time he prayed was to
ask God to save his dad, and God didn't answer his prayer. My heart just goes
out to him! I know that the gospel will help him so much! We were a little over
whelmed by all this in our first lesson, but our second lesson went so well! It
was amazing! In our first lesson we challenged him to pray. We followed up on
this challenge in our second lesson. He told us he prayed and didn't feel
anything. I asked him why he thought he didn't feel anything. He said he
doesn't think God will answer him, but he wishes he could have faith. I asked
him to read Alma
32:21-22. I told him that his desire for faith will grow into faith with
the help of the Lord. I promised that if he prayed again and had faith that he
could receive an answer to know if God loved him, that he would get that
answer. Then, the pamphlet I had been searching for earlier LITERALLY fell out
of Sister Golightly's scriptures into her hands. It was amazing - such an
inspired lesson.

The teacher that acts out Kenneth is also the teacher that
acted out Roy, our very first investigator. So, he has pretty much seen all of
our mistakes. He told us he was super proud of how far we have come, and that Kenneth
can feel our love for him. And that is what is helping us teach by the spirit.
No wonder why Christ said, "By this shall man know ye are my disciples, if
ye have love one to another." I am so grateful that the Lord has blessed
us with love for Kenneth, and continues to bless us with guidance in our
lessons, and with the spirit.

This week my favorite personal study time was reading about
Humility in True to the Faith and reading all the scriptures referenced.
It would be an awesome Family Home Evening discussion topic, if you get a
chance. It was great to dissect this virtue.

The funnies this week are pretty long:

Our teacher told us that the MTC is making us
"loco" because our whole district laughs at the dumbest things now :)

-Nagsisipagsisinungasinungalinyah is the longest word in
Tagalog. It means "to tell fake lies," which doesn't make much sense
to me. How would one “tell a true lie"?

-Last Saturday Sister Golightly and I were standing outside
the gym waiting for it to open. I saw a cute little bird, chirping and flying
across the sky, toward the gym. It kept going, flying really fast, then, SPLAT
into the brick wall! It fell to the ground and Sister Golightly and I ran over.
She said a tender prayer for it, and we watched it take its last shallow
breaths, feet twitching as it died.

-Our first lesson with Lester, he asked us if we could speak
Tagalog. We said a little bit. Then literally right after that we asked him to
read a section of a pamphlet we brought. He started reading, and then looked up
very confused and said, "This is Sebwanu, not Tagalog." I have no
idea how we got a Sebwanu pamplet, but how ironic was that?!

-While teaching her lesson to an investigator, my roommate
introduced "The First Vision" as "The First Ugly Poop."

Language
mistakes are the best!

Mahal po ako ninyo! Magbabasbas ang Diyos!

T-shirt Thursday with my roommates.

(T-shirt Tuesday would have sounded better, but I thought of the idea on Tuesday night,

and we all really liked it so, we couldn't wait!)

The first snow fall! We were so cold.

We took a picture with a previous missionary who starred in "The District" (reality show on BYU-TV).

#mtccelebstatus

My kasama and I with our Sister Training Leaders. They left the MTC on Monday. They were fantastic!

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About Me

I am a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and couldn’t be happier. I feel honored and blessed with the opportunity to serve the people in the Philippines Baguio mission. I love the Lord and His Gospel. It has been such a blessing in my life, I can’t wait to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with others! Find out more about my church at lds.org and mormon.org